TRUE: 45 Somali refugees have been repatriated from Kenya under UNHCR’s Voluntary Repatriation Program

Sunday September 8, 2019

A Facebook post claiming that 45 Somali refugees have been repatriated to Baidoa in Somalia by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is TRUE.

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The post further adds that the refugees who were repatriated from Dadaab Refugee Camp in Kenya were received by officials of the Somali government and the UNHCR Somalia office.

A tweet posted by UNHCR Somalia confirms that 45 Somali refugees from Dadaab arrived in Baidoa on August 29.The repatriation was conducted as part of the 2014 Voluntary Repatriation Program Tripartite Agreement signed by the governments of Kenya, Somali and the UNHCR. The agreement laid out the process for voluntary repatriation of Somali refugees.

Since then, UNHCR has assisted 83,938 refugees of Somali origin to voluntarily return home between December 2014 and April 2019 from both the Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps.

According to a 2019 UNHCR report, Kenya currently hosts 476,695 refugees with 54.5 percent (250,000) being of Somali origin.

PesaCheck has looked into the claim that 45 refugees of Somali origin returned to Somalia from the Daadab refugee camp in Kenya on August 29 and finds it to be TRUE.